Interview with Kristin Adams, Founder and CEO of Socialie

As the December 1st deadline for the Startup Competition & Trade Show approaches, we reflected on last year’s event and ventured onto the Twittersphere for updates on last year’s competitors. Fortunately, Kristin Adams, the founder and CEO of Socialie, and her team are never too far away from social media. Kristin volunteered to chat with us and share her team‘s experience as first-time Startup Competition & Trade Show participants.

Socialie, the winner of the Bootstrapped Track in the 2017 MIT SSAC Startup Competition, is a software startup that specializes in content creation and distribution over social media channels. Their solution to streamline outreach to third-parties, such as celebrities or athletes, by packaging content in a single recommendation to publishers caught the eyes of both judges and attendees at the conference. For publishers, the value of Socialie’s features is clearly evident, especially as Draft Day mistakes are prone to happen.

Socialie has already been quite successful, even in its initial stages, with partnerships with the Vancouver Canucks, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), and the Kansas City Chiefs. What inspired Socialie to apply to the Startup Competition & Trade Show?

Some of our team comes from professional sports backgrounds, so some of us have attended the conference while representing different leagues. The reputation of the conference is well known throughout the industry, so we knew it was a perfect place to present Socialie to our peers. We also knew we could get great feedback from everyone, from investors tapped in to sports tech to industry leaders at leagues, teams, and media companies.

How did your team prepare for the Startup Competition presentation? What did your team strive to convey about Socialie to the audience in the room?

Socialie really serves two customers…sports brands and also their stakeholders which are pro athletes most of the time. We wanted to make sure we broke down the value for each of those users and also talk about the data side of social media which sometimes isn’t talked about when it comes to athletes and social. There’s a lot of untapped insights in social at the influencer/stakeholder that we wanted to talk about.

What highlights or memorable conversations does your team have from presenting during the Startup Competition presentation or the Trade Show portion?

The whole experience from coordinating with the MIT students to the people who stopped by the tradeshow was memorable. We made so many connections with people that offered to help in different ways — whether it was make an intro or setup a meeting or helping us reach MIT talent for hiring.

What advice would you share with startups who are considering applying to the Startup Competition & Trade Show?

Don’t worry about where you are in the lifecycle of your company. I’d say more than anything make sure to share your excitement about your product and what you bring to the table for the sports ecosystem.